To remind people that food banks need donations

[LemonViolet]

I just saw a segment on the BBC news about food banks experiencing supply shortages. Which makes sense, given the cost of living crisis. They have more people needing the service and less people donating as everyone is tightening their belts.

I am a sporadic food bank donator. It just doesn’t occur to me that often as I don’t go into supermarkets and see the visual reminder of the collection station. But I am lucky enough that I can still afford to donate. I’ve just looked up my local food bank and they have about a third of their list of requested items marked in red as low or out of stock.

So I’m going to do my good turn today, pop to the supermarket, and drop a shop up to the local collection point tomorrow. And I thought I’d share on here and see if I can spur anyone else to do the same.

If you’re a regular donator then AMAZING
If like me you just donate once in a while then now is the time they need us, if you are able to.
If you haven’t donated before but you can spare a little, then look up your local service and see what they need. They usually have lists and instructions for donations online.

If you’re not able to donate then no guilt trip intended at all. I am worried posting this thread may be taken as being smug or boasting or patronising. I really just want to nudge others like me that can do this but just don’t think to that often.

Do check on your local foodbank's website what they most need at the moment.

You don't have to stick 100% to it, but mine always says that thanks to previous generosity, there is no need for past, rice or sanpro. But it does usually want tins of meat or vegetables or puddings

That's a good reminder, thanks. Our local food banks were quite high profile during the lockdowns, but it's easy to forget that the need is still there.

Donating cash or setting up a regular, monthly donation is often just as helpful (sometimes more helpful) as donating food items and easier than having to go to a shop and buy food if you shop online.

Thanks for this, I will set up a regulator monthly donation as I think they can probably get more for the same money by buying in bulk.
Mostly if I give to charity there’s a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling but with food banks I just get depressed and angry that they need to exist.
Still, they do exist so thanks OP for the reminder.

This definitely. I read the thread about charity and this is certainly something that really helps people.

Honestly they should not be normalised the government has had years to help and support people in crisis and has chosen to let charities do the heavy lifting instead

Yes I still donate but I'm a carer my income is limited

We need a system that people, especially those in work, don't need a food bank. Having food banks helps hides the shitty government we have.

I cannot stand those people voting conservative and then preaching to people who will be counting costs themselves about donating to food banks.

It would be good if the big supermarkets could offer an option to add stuff to their foodbank collection trolley via your online shop. I generally get an online shop but if I'm instore I will pop a few bits in the collection.

No I will not donate to a foodbank. Their normalisation is one of the many appalling outcomes of the last 12 years of poor governance. People should not have to rely on charity to eat - we live in a wealthy country but the wealth is shared increasingly unequally. Having the rich donate a few grocery items and think they've done their bit is not the way to solve this - it just helps to perpetuate it.

My tesco that delivers do it if you write in the comments.

The little store near me got rid of their collection point after Christmas. I can't get to another store.

Ocado do this. You chose and amount and they match it.

Can you explain that a bit more? It sounds like you’re saying that by donating to food banks, we are making things worse for people that need to use the service. Is that what you really mean? What is the alternative action you would recommend we do, that will help our neighbours right now that need to eat this week.

What? I don’t agree with food banks, but recognize that sadly there’s a need. I’ll vote, lobby my councillor and take other actions to attempt to help fix issues. But not donating (when you can) won’t help fix the current situation; it will just leave some families even hungrier.

Those saying that we should not have our normalise Food banks,just Google Foodbanks in Europe. Most countries have them, many are actually run directly by the government's. We will never realistically reach a point where some families are not in good crisis and actually Foodbanks offer so much more than just a financial handout. They are run by compassionate human beings, often with option of having coffee/food/ chat. People get to talk to a human being who cares and can often give advice.
The solution to poverty in this country does not just need to come from government. It needs to come from all of us being caring and compassionate for those beyond our immediate friends and family or nothing will ever change.

TracyMosby

I totally agree with you. We need governments that help the poor to help themselves, make work pay, and those that can’t work should at least be able to afford food.
Minimum wage needs to go, people should earn their value, a shop worker with 10 years experience gets the same wage as a new comer, something it totally wrong with this.

Global authorities on food insecurity have eyed the UK’s soaring numbers of food banks with concern. When I asked Philip Alston, the former UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, why he decided to visit the UK in 2018, he didn’t have to think very hard. “Primarily because it was a laboratory for neoliberal economic approaches to welfare,” he said, speaking with a slow, baritone Australian accent. His report concluded the experiment is failing. “The food bank is the perfect indicator of failed government policies,” he told me.

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/food-bank-pandemic-poverty-uk

Internationally, the UK is a latecomer to food banking. In Canada, the first food distribution centre opened in the city of Edmonton, Alberta in January 1981, the month that Ronald Reagan and the neoliberal age were inaugurated south of the border. Food banks multiplied following a recession and the welfare cuts of Brian
Mulroney, the Conservative Prime Minister from 1984. (Mulroney delivered a eulogy at Reagan’s funeral.) By the 1990s food banks were part of the fabric of Canadian society and, by the 2000s, multinational supermarkets were making regular, dependable donations. “Everything got very shiny,” said Elaine Power, associate professor of health studies at Queen’s University, Ontario. Today, Canadian food banks are pervasive. Great industrial warehouses holding acres of stock often sit on the outskirts of cities, positioned just out of sight, like the scullery of a stately home. And yet the number of people in Canada—a country where the 2008 recession was milder than most—struggling with insecure access to food has increased even after decades of food aid, rising from 3.4m in 2008 to 4.4m in 2018, according to government figures. One in eight Canadian households is
food insecure.

It was a trip to Canada that upended the thinking of Seb Mayfield, persuading him that food banks might be part of the problem rather than the solution.

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/food-bank-pandemic-poverty-uk

But with a burst of food banks launched in 2020 alone—around 150 new organisations have joined Ifan since last March—and with no permanent benefit reform in prospect, it’s likely that the task of feeding Britain’s hungry will remain on the shoulders of a band of under-resourced volunteers.
In Nottingham, with redundancies climbing despite the last-minute extension of the furlough scheme until March 2021, Webster is preparing for a surge in demand. He splashed out hundreds of pounds on his first freezer after receiving an emergency cash grant from local businesses and the county council. Webster yearns, above all, for a world without the need for food banks. “We don’t want to get caught up in being an alternative to a proper, decent, humane benefits system and people having a real living wage,” he told me. But once you’re running a food bank and meeting need in the community, it’s extremely difficult for managers to do anything but keep ploughing on. Speaking over the phone, Webster’s wearied voice seemed to switch in tone from anger to resignation as he looked to the immediate future: “The pressure on us is going to get even greater.”

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/food-bank-pandemic-poverty-uk

What has voting and lobbying your local councillors achieved?

I donated for many years. But the need just keeps increasing. I became uncomfortable with the realisation that I was part of the problem. Supporting foodbanks - however well intentioned - has just normalised them and taken responsibility away from the government. Saying 'people will be left hungrier' and therefore I should donate is just a guilt trip about something which is not my responsibility. I pay tax, I would happily pay more tax and I expect the government to govern in a way that means people can afford to eat.

What would happen if the food banks fell over due to lack of donations? Honestly I don't know. But it would force the government - and all of us actually - to confront the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are reliant on charity to eat in our country and they should be supported properly.

Our SB branch used to have occasional Volunteers at the door .handing lists out to Shoppers of things FB needed .Havent done this since well before PD .I try to give a few tins /coffee / tea (one of!) most weeks . Hate to think of anyone going hungry .Dad was a child in the 30s and was often hungry .He would be appalled at the situation today. We live in a prosperous town SC,Yet have local churches giving away surplus food.(not FB I dont think anyway) long queue round the block!

So you think we shouldn’t donate, and that also there’s no point lobbying politicians? Your suggestion is we watch food banks collapse and see what happens? I’m trying to understand your argument. I think that people who donate to food banks (and volunteer at them, etc) are confronting the fact that people are reliant on charity to eat, and are trying to support them. I’m unconvinced that the existence of food banks is hiding or camouflaging the issue. I don’t follow what your suggested alternative is.

Genuine question - can you access foodbanks without being on benefits?

Puddings?

Yes. Most operate on a referral basis from a church, GP, doctors, health centres

I agree we should not normalise food banks.

Not going to be a popular opinion, but food banks seem to be becoming their own industry. If you work for a food bank (it is not just volunteers), you see the solution to all problems to be more food banks.